Facebook’s New $500 Million Data Center Will Be Powered by 100% Wind Energy

Facebook announced today that it will be building a massive new data center in Fort Worth, Texas that will be powered 100% by wind power. By 2018, the social media giant also plans to draw 50% of all of its energy from renewable sources, the company revealed.

According to Facebook’s vice president of engineering Jay Parikh, “We worked with Citi Energy, Alterra Power Corporation, and Starwood Energy Group to bring 200MW of new wind energy to the Texas grid as part of this deal.” He also explained how the wind development will be 17,000 acres and will be located less than 100 miles away from the facility.

The project, which Facebook is investing $500 million into, is part of Facebook’s effort to eventually become 100% renewable. The popular social media engine revealed how it saved more than $2 billion in infrastructure costs over the last three years thanks to this effort and offered an interesting comparison: the carbon footprint of one person using Facebook for an entire year is now equal to the carbon impact of a medium latte.

In an effort to make the entire industry more energy efficient, Facebook has shared their designs for their data centers through the Open Compute Project, which the company says now has more than 200 members collaborating on sustainable data center technologies.

Facebook’s construction on the Fort Worth data center has begun and is expected to be online by late 2016.